I have this friend. We'll call her Cactus.(Disclaimer: it's shocking, but her name is not actually Cactus. Just roll with it for the sake of this post).

Cactus decided to put on 100 shirts one day.

Now, I know what you're thinking: why on earth would anyone make a conscious decision to put 100 shirts on at once? I'll admit, it doesn't make much sense. But neither does taking 7 AP classes at once, which Cactus also consciously decided to do. There was no logic behind Cactus' ideas. Her sanity--the one thing that kept her from making stupid decisions--was gone.

So she put on 100 shirts.

My other friend--we'll call him Grapefruit--assisted her in this process. It was his shirts that were being used; Cactus and I had joined him at his humble abode after school that day, mainly for the purpose of eating all of the food he had. His shirts were miraculously large enough to stretch over top of the others. However, one boy can only own so many shirts, and so the number of layers was slightly limited.

29 shirts. An incredible feat for one girl.

She looked a bit like a walking burrito crossed with a penguin. She had to waddle around with her arms out at her sides since there were so many layers propping up her armpits. How she could breathe, I don't know. She looked miserable, but I couldn't be sure if that was a side-effect of the shirts, or the crippling depression caused by her excessive academics. I decided it was both.

Taking off the shirts was even more difficult than putting them on. Cactus could barely move her arms, so poor Grapefruit was left with the task of peeling off every layer. At one point, Cactus' own shirt almost came off, which honestly would have been the most normal that happened that day.

I wish I could say Cactus came out of that situation with a new outlook on life. But unfortunately, several weeks later, she spent over $20 on fast food before an AP Physics test. Granted, so did I, but this isn't about me. This is a metaphor for life.

Don't pile more on yourself than you can handle. While it may sometimes seem like you are invincible, you are still human. Breathing and self-care are necessary to a healthy life. Stacking too much work in your schedule, though it may seem like productivity, is actually detrimental. Don't do it.